Love Letter: The Truth About Long-Term Love (10/11/23)

You might not know this about me, but I never had a relationship that lasted longer than 9-10 MONTHS before I met Andrew. 

I became a relationship coach because I was unwilling to believe that people were just “unlucky in love,” and I longed to learn the truth about what it takes to create a great relationship. I believed I was destined for great love, and I held onto that as I began my personal journey of healing and then my journey in all my training with relationship teachers. 

Andrew and I have been together for almost 10 YEARS now. This feels wild to me to say out loud. After all this time, I have learned some major truths about what it means to love someone long-term, and the other day, I came across a quote that resonated with me. “To love someone long term is to attend a thousand funerals of the people they used to be” by Heidi Priebe. 

If you’re in a long-term relationship, does this feel true for you and your partner? 

We have to allow OURSELVES to change. The magic of long-term love is that you become willing to let go much more than you ever have and more willing to love the person in front of you for who they are now, versus wishing and hoping for what it was like during the honeymoon phase. 

Love is an ACTIVE practice and a choice, and I love helping partnered women and couples right now, deepen their love. 

Your midweek mantra is, “I embrace the given of life: that everything changes.”✨

There really is nothing like the early stages of a relationship. 

That’s why so many people chase it. 

It’s when we are our most generous selves, open-hearted and free. It’s also when we are flooded with all the happy hormones like dopamine, serotonin, and oxytocin.

For me, this is the first stage of effortlessness.

Everything felt magical and divine in the early months of my relationship with Andrew, and I will be forever grateful for that time. 

I am now grateful for how we show up to our lives every day. I’m also thankful for the effort that we make to nurture our love, our connection, and our individual well-being. 

Sometimes, we think falling in love IS love. It’s not. 

It’s falling in love, and then when that phase is over, you find out if you are now resting in love and can have love grow together since love begins when the effort begins. 

Love begins when we choose to open our hearts rather than close them, speak up rather than shut down, and lean in rather than run away. 

Relationships are our greatest teachers because, in a healthy one, we can’t hide. 

In a healthy one, we face ourselves just as much as our partners daily. 

I am grateful that Andrew is my person, even on difficult days; I know he’s the one I want to grow old with. 

He’s the one who has allowed for every version of me, time and time again, especially now as he witnesses the greatest transformation of my life. 

Here’s the thing – you can’t find your person unless you’re BEING yourself. Period. 

I help women clear away everything standing in front of their hearts, all of the survival behaviors that make it impossible to be seen and known, which is what they wish for most. 

Check out The New Truth podcast episode from this week, “Are You In A Woundmate or Soulmate Relationship?.” We show you how to identify the signs that indicate if you are in a relationship based on your survival patterns and unresolved childhood trauma- and how to know if it’s a healthy, soulmate relationship. We also share tips on how to make important changes to create growth-based, thriving, supportive relationships in your life!

I love you,